DASH AND STOP a8l
and the playing at the Stage Society performance was meticulously
careful.—Times. (Insert a dash between bettered and the semicolon,
which then need not be more than a comma) *
But that it is not true will probably be admitted on the
strength of sentences like:
24. There may be dilTorences of opinion on the degrees—-no one
takes white for black: most people sometimes take blackish for black—,
but that is not fatal to my argument.
On the other hand, we doubt whether a full stop is ever
allowed to stand in the middle of a dash parenthesis, as it of
course may in a bracket parenthesis. The reason for the dis-
tinetion is clear. When we have had a left-hand bracket we
know for certain that a right-hand one is due, full stops or no
full stops; but when we have had a dash, we very seldom know
for certain that it is one of a pair; and the appearance of a
full stop would he too severe a trial of our faith. It seems
natural to suppose that the double-dash parenthesis is thus
accounted for: the construction started with a single dash;
but as it was often necessary to revert to the main construe-
tion, the second dash was resorted to as a declaration that the
close time, or state of siege, was over. The rule we deduce is:
All that follows a dash is to be taken as under its influence
until either a second dash terminates it, or a full stop is reached.
Our answer to the third question has already been given by
implication; but it may he better to give it again explicitly.
We first refer to examples i, 2, 3, 6, 13, 14, 24, in all of which
the stop, if one is to be used, though our view is that in most
of these sentences it should not, is in the right place; and to
example 16, in which it is in the wrong place. We next add
two new examples of wrong order, with corrections as usual; the
rules for stops with brackets are the same as with double dashes,
25. Throughout the parts which they are intended to make most
personally their own, (the PHulms,) it Is always the Law which Is
spoken of with chief joy,—BUSKIN. (Remove both commas, and use
according to taste cither none at all, or one after the second
bracket)